Coming Soon

Our Friends

Interview with Jim Frayling on Wembley and Music

Metallica joined George Michael in headlining during Wembley's debut year, but probably the band to cause the biggest buzz from doing so was Muse:

Usually we deal with promoters, managers and agents but we did get to know Muse quite well. I think their promoter, Stuart Galbraith, gave them a lot of confidence. The management were up for it as well and they're a band who like to take things on. We had them here for the press launch, but before that the actual band came for the production visit which is quite rare. As they looked round I could sense they were quite nervous. One of them said, "It's a lot bigger than an arena!" You could see it was sinking in and then they just rolled up their sleeves and said, "How are we going to attack this?" Their whole crew pulled it off, led by them, because they get really involved in their gigs, looking at creative solutions. We have a big stand behind the stage and you can just drape that, but they put these giant spheres there that lit up and which really added to the experience and made it feel more intimate. The aerialists were a challenge to stage safely and working out how you get someone flying above the heads of a crowd is a slightly alien concept to people who look after health and safety, but to their great credit everybody really knuckled down. In the end there were two people holding the wire that tethers the acrobats and we basically cleared the area between the front pit and the main crowd and they ran up and down there, in and out, to control the height. I think those HAARP shows just cemented Muse's reputation as great live performers even further. It came as no surprise to me that Muse received a number of industry awards for 'best live act' and their show definitely contributed to Wembley twice winning 'Best Live Venue'.